Abuse of 8-year-old Palmdale boy described in graphic testimony

Graphic grand jury testimony reveals details of the abuse suffered by an 8-year-old Los Angeles County boy allegedly beaten to death by his mother and her boyfriend.

Hundreds of pages of court documents reviewed by the Los Angeles Times show Gabriel Fernandez was doused with pepper spray, forced to eat his own vomit and locked in a cabinet with a sock stuffed in his mouth to muffle his screams.

The Palmdale boy died in May 2013, days after he was hospitalized with injuries including a cracked skull, broken ribs and burns.

Pearl Fernandez and Isauro Aguirre have pleaded not guilty to murder charges with special allegations of torture. They are in jail awaiting trial.

The death prompted calls for sweeping reforms to the troubled county foster-care system because child welfare workers failed to remove the boy. Officials have taken steps to fire two social workers and two supervisors, while others involved in the case received letters of warning or reprimand.

Pearl Fernandez called 911 on May 22, 2013, to report that her son was not breathing. She told deputies who arrived at the apartment that Gabriel had fallen and hit his head on a dresser, according to testimony.

When paramedics arrived, they found the boy naked in a bedroom, not breathing, with BB pellets embedded in his lung and groin. He died two days later.

“It was just like every inch of this child had been abused,” testified James Cermak, a Los Angeles County Fire Department paramedic.

Attorneys representing Fernandez, 30, and Aguirre, 34, could not be reached for comment. Because of repeated delays in setting a preliminary hearing, prose­cutors convened a grand jury. The indictment was returned July 28.

Fernandez and Aguirre deliberately tortured the boy to death, hiding their tracks with forged doctor’s notes and lies to authorities, Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Hatami told the grand jury, noting, “For eight straight months, he was abused, beaten and tortured more severely than many prisoners of war.”

The abuse worsened in the months leading up to Gabriel’s death, according to testimony from two of his siblings, both of whom are minors. They said Gabriel was forced to eat cat feces, rotten spinach and his own vomit. He slept in a locked cabinet and wasn’t let out to go to the bathroom.

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Gabriel remained with his mother and her boyfriend despite a history of calls to the county and investigations by social workers.

Several agencies looked into allegations of abuse before Gabriel’s death and opted to leave the boy in the home. On multiple occasions, deputies went to the family’s apartment or to Gabriel’s school to follow up on reports of abuse and of the boy being suicidal. Each time, they concluded there was no evidence of abuse and did not write a detailed report.

In July, the boy’s family filed a wrongful death suit against the L.A. County Department of Children and Family Services, Public Social Services, Sheriff’s Department, the Palmdale school district and the boy’s mother and her boyfriend.